MARK2023

Pinterest Is Turning Out Brand Advocates

by Christina Mannarino, May 21, 2012, 8:25 AM

Recent reports indicate the Pinterest tidal wave may be receding, yet there is no doubt people are just as bananas about new, quirky and socially connected platforms as ever. Entrepreneurs are jumping at the chance to invent the next hottest start-up and one thing remains clear: Marketers must be just as interested in understanding best practices for using these emerging platforms.

Entrepreneurs are not alone in recognizing the potential for sites that offer high user engagement, often tied to social networking and e-commerce. The Fancy is a Pinterest-like site that monetizes user-curated images and allows users to organize images into lists and conduct transactions on the site. Two new digital start-ups, Pinstagram and Pingram, merge Pinterest and Instagram in the latest mash-up to reach investor’s eyes. It’s no wonder the venture capital world is bubbling and marketers are scrambling to understand how they can monetize emerging platforms.

Peer pressure: Everyone else is doing it-should you, too?

According to comScore, Pinterest users spent an average 89 minutes on the site in January, far passing Twitter and LinkedIn, tying with Tumblr and second only to Facebook. Just because Pinterest has more than 10 million members, should every brand have a presence? If so, how can it be impactful and ultimately drive brand participation?

Brands need to recognize that the power lies within the listening. Clients should sign in and listen/watch what participants create, how they share and with whom. At that point, you’ll have a more clear vision of your potential reach, engagement and competition.

Shift From Consumerism To Participation

Inherent to Pinterest’s intrigue and its commonality with other social sites like The Fancy, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, is the social connections and share ability. When marketers make content easy to share via the site, they tap into a new vehicle for raising brand visibility. The user experience is less about consumerism and more about participation (both active and passive). It feels organic, relevant, focused and socially driven.

Both marketers and participants post content and share it, which increases reach and relevancy, but also raises credibility of the message. A marketer doesn’t just have to share their own brand’s information or products. If you know your participants are seeking trend and style, why not also connect with content from leading stylists and fashion setters, within your branded page?

Marketers should harness and utilize available data to better understand new and existing customer behaviors on socially connected platforms like Pinterest. Pinterest users are estimated to be largely between 25 and 54 and the majority are women. Would a brand that caters predominantly to male baby boomers benefit from a Pinterest presence as much as a brand with a core customer base of millennial females? Probably not, so one size does not fit all and marketers must consider this before allocating dollars to the latest and greatest.

Leveraging the social analytics behind a platform can help guide where and with whom to invest time and resources. Marketers may be surprised and see that a small sub segment of their total customer base is male and drives a larger average order size within social shopping platforms like this than they do females. This is when we can make social data truly powerful for brands!

According to comScore, the typical Pinterest user profile:

•68% of users are women

•80% are 25+

•50% have children

•28% have a household income of $100K+

So You Begin to Pin: Now What?

Smart marketers harness the power of the pin, among other social capabilities, and capitalize on emerging social platforms. They engage with:

Visually appealing content: Startups like Pinterest and Instagram owe much of their success to presentation. High resolution, appropriately sized and clear pictures and video are a must.

Brand consistency: Emerging platforms, just like any digital platform, are an extension of your brand identity. Maintain consistency with your native site and other branding efforts. There is also no room to be stagnant on an emerging platform.

Original and shared content: Many emerging platforms are designed to mix both. As evidenced by the sign on partnerships with Facebook and Twitter, engagement begets engagement.

Test and learn: Emerging platforms are really a win-win in this area. Use analytics to understand site engagement, test new opportunities and learn the best way to engage with users on any given platform.

Making a Job Offer? Don’t Make This Mistake

Client emails me and says “Hey, I want to offer the job to Kathy, but I only have her salary on her past two jobs, can you get her salary from the company before that? That would be helpful to arrive at a fair compensation package for both her and us.”

Sounds pretty reasonable, right?

Except it’s not the right way to set salary.

If my client wants to retain Kathy, her past salary is irrelevant – the only factor that matters is market rate. And in this search, all the other qualified candidates were within 5% of each other in total compensation–that’s market rate. (Here is more information about how to calculate it).

If you want to attract and retain good people, take your nose out of the salary surveys, ignore individual salary histories, don’t go into an excel-spreadsheet-trance with your budget, and pay at least fair market rate. Because what Kathy earned in 2005 will not help you retain her when your competitors come calling.

Great read on #non-profts and social media

"The report highlights how nonprofits have continued to grow their presence on social media and have done so without spending inordinate amounts of money – their Twitter and Facebook communities were boosted by 81 percent and 30 percent respectively in the past year."

written by Tony Mamone

ADOTAS – Every morning, our style editors comb through their favorite fashion blogger’s Tumblr sites, while our marketing team pores over Pinterest at work and on their own time. Seeing this, I challenged our marketing department to brainstorm how we could engage as a brand, and we’ve since become prolific pinners, held a productive Pinterest Fashion Week Contest, were cited as a brand to follow on Pinterest, and have seen a substantial rise in traffic from these sources to our own sites. From Pinterest alone, we have seen an 819 percent increase in monthly referrals in the last six months. While Facebook still drives the most traffic to the majority of sites, brands would be ill-advised to ignore these exciting new social platforms.

There is little question that Pinterest and Tumblr are today’s hottest social platforms. After Etsy announced that Pinterest was their number-one traffic driver and comScore shared that Tumblr’s 15.9 million visitors were spending, on average, 141.7 minutes a month on their countless blogs, marketing VPs everywhere took notice. As companies have subsequently developed presences across these platforms, there have been exceptional examples of engagement and marketing efforts. Here, we bring you several — from a fashion brand to an online publisher and a even a print powerhouse founded in 1922 — all going to show that social platforms are for everyone.

Kate Spade New York – Inspire & Engage

Kate Spade has been recognized across the industry for its exemplary social strategy. While accepting the award for the “Top Innovator” category at the Fashion 2.0 awards, Johanna Murphy, vice president of eCommerce, underscored Kate Spade’s approach of including non-company imagery on their social media channels. “It’s really an extension of our brand personality and our brand voice,” she said. Remember those 12 very important words, and act on them.

Murphy added: “But… social media today is connected, and people talk to each other. If you’re going to participate in that forum, that’s the context. They expect you to talk to them and they expect you to listen them, too.” This is not a novel idea. You can find it in every social media hygiene guide. The nuance, however, is that brands need to remember it becomes even more important on platforms like Pinterest where there are so few comments, making responses from companies drastically more important.

Learnings:

• On social platforms like Pinterest and Tumblr, your readers come to expect more than just your product. Share things that inspire your brand, whatever your team gets excited about, and give readers a behind the scenes peek into your company. They’ll love you for it.

• Respond. If someone makes a comment or asks a question about an image, make sure there is someone tasked to respond.

StyleBistro — A Little Friendly Competition

StyleBistro, a fashion and beauty site, as well as many other brands, has used Pinterest to run contests. In StyleBistro’s case, participants were directed to pin their favorite 20-plus images from the company’s Fall 2012 Fashion Week albums. With over 33,000 images to choose from, participants were able to deeply engage with a wealth of photography the company aimed to promote. With multiple chances to win beauty items hand- picked by StyleBistro’s editors, engagement was high and thousands of new pieces of content were introduced into the Pinterest ecosystem. Since 80 percent of pins are re-pins, the content has a much longer lifespan than if it was living solely on the brand’s site.

Learnings:

• Determine how social platforms can be used to create fun engagement opportunities with your content while also practicing normal usage of the medium.

• Connect with and observe companies that have successfully run contests and learn best practices. Remember, this is new for everyone — sometimes you have to just try things.

Better Homes and Gardens – Appropriate Content

According to comScore, in Feburary 2012, 63 percent of Pinterest’s U.S. users are women. Better Homes and Garden’s customer is also predominantly female. With a brand-focused content strategy, BH&G is at an advantage, since the brand’s highly visual content is perfectly suited for Pinterest.

Meredith, the publisher of BH&G, has disclosed that 40 to 50 percent of its digital users are new not only to BH&G, but to Meredith as a whole. By actively utilizing platforms such as Pinterest and Tumblr, they are providing another vehicle with which to communicate with readers, but they are also inviting a large new group of individuals – and hopefully customers – to engage with their brand.

Learnings:

• Discover the platform where your customers are engaging. Pinterest skews heavily female, while Tumblr is almost evenly split.

• If your content is ideal for a specific platform, embrace it. It’s more than likely you’ll gain a new audience that’s unreachable via your current outreach efforts.

Oscar PR Girl and Nina Garcia — Go Big

For some brands, it’s become all about personalizing social media. And oftentimes, that means one person is in charge. Nina Garcia, the current fashion director at Marie Claire Magazine and judge on the Lifetime reality program Project Runway, manages her own social media platforms. Erika Bearman tweets, blogs and Pins under the pseudonym Oscar PR Girl and is, in fact, the director of communications for Oscar de la Renta. Perhaps learning from Steve Jobs, who maintained company personality by responding to emails himself, these two brands understand that assigning your company’s voice to a young intern because they “get” Twitter is not necessarily a wise idea. After all, you wouldn’t let your summer intern design an ad campaign, right?

For those hesitant about dedicating such valuable resources to efforts with a not-so transparent ROI, take note of Bearman’s comments to the Wall Street Journal: “(They are) going to happen anyway and I think I’d rather be part of the discussion.” The public is going to discuss, analyze and pick apart everything your brand does — and much of their conversation takes place on social platforms. A senior-level individual will be well-equipped to jump in with messages that are on-brand while still retaining the human voice that is often lost with canned responses. Allowing your brand’s voice to shine makes you more accessible – for proof, just refer to Oscar de la Renta – whose merchandise ranges from a $570 blouse to a $20,000 hand embroidered gown.

Learnings:

• Ensure that those tasked with communications for your company, regardless of the platform, are qualified to speak for you.

• While the focus should be the brand message, allowing your ambassador’s personality to shine through makes your company appear more accessible — particularly important if you are a luxury brand.

Christine Martinez — Miles of Style — Thoughtful Captions

Part of the beauty of Tumblr and Pinterest is how easy it is to share content you find and love. When you do this, the formerly assigned caption travels with the image unless you edit it. Christine Martinez, one of the 10 most-followed people on Pinterest and a lifestyle blogger at MilesToStyle.com, teaches a class about brands using Pinterest as a marketing tool. She stresses the importance of search-friendly captions and notes that in order for your content to surface in searches, the title and topic of the board you pin it to are important, but even more critical is the caption you choose to include. Additionally, double-check that your profile description, which now appears front and center, is not only search-friendly, but fun and engaging too!

Visually, the square thumbnail of your profile image is placed beneath each item you pin, making your brand immediately associated with the image as well as the caption. This realization even further illustrates the importance of accurately representing your brand’s voice on social media platforms.

Learnings:

• Write search-friendly captions for your pins, particularly when it is your product.

• Compose your captions in a voice consistent with your brand.

Barney’s — Using the Whole Toolbox

Pinterest offers many features, many of which are overlooked by brands. One of these is the ability to share pins on other social networks. Here we see Barney’s of New York, a high-end department store, using this feature to share a pin on their Facebook page. Barney’s does an excellent job of utilizing the platform’s features. This tactic allows Barneys to cross-promote across their various social platforms. Instead of having an outright “Please follow us on Pinterest” status update, the brand exposes its fans to another place where they can learn more.

Learnings:

• Utilize the ability to share content across platforms. • As features are added, consider how you can use them to your best advantage.

Whether you are jumping into these new social platforms with two feet or just beginning to dip your toes in the water, there is no question that given the impact of Pinterest and Tumblr, responsible brands will have to evaluate how they can participate. As you plan or assess your strategy, use the lessons demonstrated by the companies above, namely:

• Behind the Scenes: Give your customers a peek into what inspires you, what influences your brand, and your company culture. Extend your focus beyond your own content or product.

• Time to Bond — Consumers expect to be able to interact with your brand on these platforms. Make sure someone with the appropriate brand voice and license to speak for the company is tasked to respond and engage.

• Low-Hanging Fruit – Engage on those platforms whose demographics match your brand’s first.

• Fun Times — Develop fun promotions, contests and activities for your customers on both Tumblr and Pinterest. The opportunities are vast.

• Be Human – While it is important to maintain your brand’s voice, allow the personality of those managing your platforms to shine through. Customers will find it endearing.

• Minding Your SEO – Keep in mind that search engines look at your captions, profile text and board descriptions. Using keywords that people search for will help your material to surface.

• Be Thoughtful — Look at your profile images and make sure that they are optimized for the different formats each platform requires.

• Taking Advantage – Check out all of the features on any platform you engage on and determine how each can be used to extend your story and brand!

4 Lessons Professionals Can Learn from College Students

Millennials are often painted as lazy, entitled, impatient and unfocused — but a group of college students with whom I recently spent a weekend dispelled all of those stereotypes and gave me hope for the future.

At the first-ever PR Workshop for the University of Michigan’s Communication Studies program, 30 undergraduate students dedicated their entire weekend — giving up their Friday night and showing up at the ungodly hour of 8:30am on Saturday and Sunday (including having lost an hour to Daylight Savings Time) — to get a crash course in the public relations field.  UM does not offer vocational classes — nor did it when I was enrolled there many moons ago — but because so many students have expressed an interest in the PR industry, the brilliant and energetic Susan Douglas, who heads up the department, decided it was worth doing a pilot program that involved alumni in the business sharing their lessons and knowledge with the undergrads.

Over the course of the past eight months, I recruited several other participants, most of them fellow Wolverines, to give up their own weekends to fly to Ann Arbor for this workshop. The impressive lineup included Eddie Alterman, editor-in-chief, Car and Driver; Rick Bastien, writer/producer, HLN; Katie Verann Cwayna, senior account executive at Kaplow Communications; Tom Keaney, COO of Rubenstein Communications; Bob Meadows, deputy editor, Essence; Sabina Ptacin, founder of Preneur.net and Red Branch PR; and Marni Raitt, founder, First Raitt Communications.

We PR pros walked the students through the basics of public relations — from building a press strategy to developing relationships with media, leveraging social media for publicity and dealing with crises — and then gave them an assignment: to create a comprehensive PR campaign for an amazing non-profit organization called She’s the First (STF), which sponsors girls’ education in the developing world, helping them be the first in their families to graduate. Started by Tammy Tibbetts, a passionate twenty-something colleague of mine who went from being a web and social media editor at Hearst to running a growing and influential 501(c)(3) that has so far helped girls in eight Third World countries, including India, Ethiopia, Guatemala and South Sudan. But as STF gives 100 percent of the funds to the cause, the organization still doesn’t have enough money to hire a staff or a PR firm to help promote what it’s doing. When I was trying to come up with a project that would allow the UM students to be creative, strategic and impactful, STF seemed like the perfect fit. And it was.

From the participating alumni, the students learned that they must do their research and be prepared,  how to be persistent without being a pest, how to stay calm and honest when handling a crisis and the importance of going beyond their job description.  But we professionals took valuable lessons from the students as well, including:

The Future is Bright: And I mean that in two ways — these Millennials were ambitious and curious, as well as being intelligent. They asked smart questions, learned quickly and impressed us with their attention to detail. The audience was engaged, paid attention and genuinely seemed interested in the field of public relations.

Gen Y Likes to Play Dress-Up: On an early Sunday morning in a college town, I would have expected the students to be sporting jeans and hoodies (if they had to roll out of bed at all), but these pupils showed up to our final session dressed to the nines — in blazers, dresses and heels, not a shred of denim or fleece in sight. We didn’t ask them to dress up but they did on their own and it made their PR presentations look polished and professional. They heeded the advice, “Dress for the job you want, not the job you have” (or don’t have yet!).

College is Full of Creative Minds: A recent article on Psychology Today‘s blog says that “Gen Y has a continuing thirst for learning and personal growth; and they want to have new experiences, try new things, and be creative.”  We witnessed that firsthand when the workshop participants, who were split into random groups to tackle different areas of the PR campaign for She’s the First, presented their ideas. They were fresh, innovative and as creative — if not more so — than those of far more experienced PR pros.

Students Are Eager to Join the Workforce: The young women (and man!) who signed up for this course came well-prepared, asking if we knew of internship or entry-level positions at our companies, if they could email their resumes (which many of them did that weekend) and for advice on how to break into the PR field, particularly if they lack experience. And, within a few days, many of them were following us on Twitter and had sent us requests to connect on LinkedIn. When my fellow panelists and I were in college, finding a job was the last thing on our minds — we were lucky if we made it to class! — but these Millennials are growing up in a recession, forcing them to think about their post-graduate futures and be assertive about making whatever connections they can.

I was inspired by the go-getter attitude and poise of these students and feel encouraged  by the thought that they will be entering the job market in the next few years. If this is the next generation of our workforce, we’ll be in good shape.

written by: Jessica Kleinman via:

Four Small-Business Lessons from #TheHungerGames

BY KARA OHNGREN 

Twenty-four “tributes” between ages 12 and 18 are chosen at random from the districts of Panem, a totalitarian state in post-apocalyptic North America, to compete in a barbaric fight for survival. Losing means certain doom, but winning promises a life of luxury. Unless you’ve been asleep in a cave in the ruins of District 13, you’re probably familiar with the plot of the best-selling book series The Hunger Games.

Suzanne Collins’s epic trilogy follows Katniss Everdeen, the fictional 16-year-old who volunteers for the games after her younger sister is chosen as a tribute. To mark the release of the first film in the franchise, we look to Katniss for lessons to be learned about surviving on your own. (Warning: Spoilers abound.) If you follow this guide for your business, perhaps the odds will be ever in your favor.

1. Know your strengths. “There, resting on a mound of blanket rolls, is a silver sheath of arrows and a bow, already strung, just waiting to be engaged. That’s mine, I think. It’s meant for me.”

Katniss knows her strengths. As a gifted hunter, she realizes there is no one in the arena better with a bow. Likewise, be sure your business plays to your talents and interests. If you have no experience with computers, a tech company probably isn’t your best bet. Create a company in an area where you consider yourself ahead of the competition in experience and know-how -- and you just might survive.

2. Fill a need. "Sitting on my sleeping bag is a small plastic pot attached to a silver parachute. My first gift from a sponsor! . . . I unscrew the lid and I know by the scent that it’s medicine."

When Katniss’s sponsors see her suffering from terrible burns, they know immediately she will need medicine if she is to survive the night. They spring into action, sending her a soothing ointment to stop her pain. Before you start your new venture, you must identify an unmet need in the marketplace that your company can fill. Take a look around your community and see if there are any wounds on which you can put some entrepreneurial ointment.

3. Master the basics. ". . . he shows us a simple, excellent trap that will leave a human competitor dangling by a leg from a tree. We concentrate on this one skill for an hour until both of us have mastered it."

When training for the arena, Katniss and her fellow tribute and ally, Peeta, opt to skip the more-advanced combat classes in favor of learning survival basics, such as snares and camouflage. This is an important lesson for an entrepreneur. Before starting your own enterprise, learn the basics. Take an entrepreneurship class and pick the brains of other small-business owners in your area. Those early lessons will help prevent easily avoidable and costly mistakes down the road.

4. Be yourself. "Then I remember Peeta’s words on the roof. '. . .I’m more than just a piece in their Games.'. . . Rue was more than a piece in their Games. And so am I."

At this key moment in the story, Katniss realizes that no matter what the outcome of the Hunger Games, she will be true to herself. So she promotes herself to the audience as not only a great fighter, but also a loyal friend. She chooses to honor her fallen friend Rue rather than flee into the wilderness. This noble action is rewarded with a much-needed gift of bread from Rue’s home district. As an entrepreneur, never be afraid to show your true self. Potential customers respond to a business they can relate to. So, if you’re young and hip, flaunt it. If your business is socially conscious, let it show. And like Katniss, you will be rewarded.

Mark Loves a Good Sample Sale to Keep Him Dressing for the Job He Wants - Not the One He Has

What: Carolina Herrera Why: Up to 70 percent off past-season ready-to-wear and accessories samples and stock. When: Today, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Where: 37 W. 57th St., b/t Fifth & Sixth Aves., ste. 901.

What: Shashi Why: Throw a spring arm party with 75 percent off colorful bracelets, friendship bands, and beaded necklaces at the jeweler’s first sample sale. When: Today & Thurs., 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Where: 209 W. 38th St., b/t Sixth & Seventh Aves., 3rd flr., std. 11.

What: Lee Angel Why: Up to 70 percent off brass cuffs, enamel bracelets, and sparkling drop earrings, plus there’s a $5 room. When: Today & Thurs., 11 a.m.-7 p.m.; Fri., 1 a.m.-5 p.m. Where: 524 Broadway, at Spring St., 6th flr.

What: Creatures of Comfort Why: Up to 95 percent off A.P.C., Creatures of Comfort, Zero + Maria Cornejo, VPL, Robert Clergerie, Isabel Marant, Acne, Rachel Comey, Surface to Air, and A Détacher should make you comfortable. When: Fri., 3-8 p.m.; Sat. & Sun., 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Where: 376 Broome St., b/t Mott & Mulberry Sts.

What: Frette Why: Take up to 80 percent off the famed linens, bed sets, duvets, bath products, and loungewear from Italy. When: Mar. 27-31. Tues.-Fri., 9 a.m.-6:30 p.m.; Sat., 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Where: 260 Fifth Ave., b/t 28th & 29th Sts.

What: Maisonette 1977 Why: Cropped turquoise suits, silk print dresses, and lightweight sweaters from current and past seasons for up to 80 percent off. When: Mar. 29 & 30. Thurs. & Fri., 11 a.m.-7:30 p.m. Where: 347 W. 36th St., b/t Eighth & Ninth Aves., ste. 804.

What: Comptoir des Cotonniers Why: The brand’s first-ever sample sale ranges from $10 for jewelry to $120 for long coats. Everything else (button-downs, handbags, dresses, shoes, skirts, blazers) is up to 75 percent off. When: Mar. 31-Apr. 5. Sat. & Sun., 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Mon.-Thurs., 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Where: 261 W. 36th St., b/t Seventh & Eighth Aves., 2nd flr.

What: Miha Why: Crisp white pantsuits, coral maxidresses, and chic green sheaths from past seasons at 70-90 percent off. When: Apr. 2-4. Mon.-Wed., 10 a.m.-6:30 p.m. Where: 330 W. 38th St., b/t Eighth & Ninth Aves., ste. 1202.

What: Goat Why: Get a sneak peek at sleek, ladylike dresses, tops, and knit jackets at the British brand’s first stateside sale. When: Apr. 3 & 4. Tues., 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; Wed., 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Where: The Benjamin, 125 E. 50th St., at Lexington Ave.

via Daily Candy

Elle Communications seeks a publicist for leading and executing innovative public relations campaigns for business and lifestyle clients in the San Diego office. The ideal candidate has a strong work ethic, is incredibly results-driven, has experience managing or supporting top business and lifestyle accounts, can provide examples of top-tier media results and maintains close relationships with business and lifestyle media representatives in the national landscape. Previous agency experience and social media savvy is required. The ideal candidate for this position will… • Have 1-3 years of agency experience working with clients in the business and lifestyle arena. • Have experience designing and implementing PR campaigns and be prepared to discuss the results of those campaigns. • Have a finger strongly on the pulse of the creative landscape and be able to identify and craft stories around key trends. • Offer a creative, personalized approach to landing top-tier media placements. • Have experience and proven results managing media launches and press events. • Have experience planning community relations and influencer campaigns. • Have strong, proven contacts in business and lifestyle media. • Have experience working with bloggers, online and digital media. • Have proven a strong expertise of social media as a PR tool. • Demonstrate pride in their work. • Be willing to work long, hard and smart for an agency that will treat you with respect and offers a uniquely creative, loving and passionate environment and team.

For more information, please visit: http://ht.ly/9KvW1

Silbermann said he had to cajole his way into Google.  He was hired to design products like display ads.

"I thought Google was the coolest place," said Silbermann. "People there were so smart and they were all doing these really interesting things.  I just felt really lucky to be a a part of it even in a small way."

Silbermann took two things away from his Google experience: he learned to think big and he was exposed to people who built amazing products.

"Google had the audacity to think at a really big scale," said Silbermann. "We're making so much money, let's take a picture of every street. Like, nobody does that! It was inspiring"

"My mother always thought that to be a woman was a superior thing, not inferior"